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Coneygree is a fine animal, and if he can give a fit and ‘reformed’ Bobs Worth 21lbs, I’ll be thinking twice about my 2016 nap: Vautour in the Gold Cup
But I very much doubt he can concede that weight
As for Mullins, his eye is fixed like a laser on Cheltenham/Punchestown. He works back from there, and seems to care little, in comparison, at least, for anything else.
Steeplechasing I would agree however he as said this year he would do things different and try and win more in the UK. It will be interesting.
I also think you underestimate just how good Coneygree is. I don’t think Bobs Worth is Bach despite the win yesterday.
We will see.
I think this could be the best race of the season.Coneygree ran his 2 inferior rivals into the ground but I would be surprised if he could do that in a Hennessy with half a dozen horses travelling well on his tail.
If Coneygree runs his usual race, the surprise will surely be seeing “half a dozen” horses travelling well on his tail”: this last happened in a novices’ hurdle in 2012. If one is going to look around for something to oppose the class horses off a light weight usually one would look for a second season chaser, but with the exception of Saphir du Rheu, last years’ novices look pretty average. Perhaps Bob’s Worth is back to something like his best off a feather weight but didn’t really ‘travel’ in a race when he was at it, so for me it’s a duel between Saphir du Rheu and Coneygree – and we know how they usually end.
Saphir du Rheu is the most likely danger but I would be most concerned about how his jumping holds up against the pressure Coneygree will put it under. I would be interested to see if Kings Palace runs as he is also a noted front runner and could cause Coneygree problems by not giving him an easy lead upfront.
I can understand why Bobs Worth is running due to the weight concession but he has never convinced me that he really enjoys jumping fences (maybe his size means it takes much more effort to get from one side to another) and I am not sure that he is as good as he was when winning the Gold Cup in 2013 and arguably he will be facing tougher opposition as well.
Although he has won on soft ground three times, I think any chance he has would be greatly enhanced by a much sounder surface (5 of his 11 wins have come on good ground with another 3 on good to soft), so if the ground came up on the good side Coneygree may be more vunerable to him and others as he has never actually raced on anything faster than good to soft ground.
For what it is worth, in my opinion Bobs Worth should be going down the stayers route and running in the Long Distance Hurdle on Hennessy day instead.
Saphir du Rheu is the most likely danger but I would be most concerned about how his jumping holds up against the pressure Coneygree will put it under. I would be interested to see if Kings Palace runs as he is also a noted front runner and could cause Coneygree problems by not giving him an easy lead upfront.
I can understand why Bobs Worth is running due to the weight concession but he has never convinced me that he really enjoys jumping fences (maybe his size means it takes much more effort to get from one side to another) and I am not sure that he is as good as he was when winning the Gold Cup in 2013 and arguably he will be facing tougher opposition as well.
Although he has won on soft ground three times, I think any chance he has would be greatly enhanced by a much sounder surface (5 of his 11 wins have come on good ground with another 3 on good to soft), so if the ground came up on the good side Coneygree may be more vunerable to him and others as he has never actually raced on anything faster than good to soft ground.
For what it is worth, in my opinion Bobs Worth should be going down the stayers route and running in the Long Distance Hurdle on Hennessy day instead.
Has anyone considerd what type of performance it might take from Coneygree to actually win this race?? Im not sure what he is rated as at the moment but the simple fact is that it would at a minimum take a performance similar to Denmans 09 victory…and lets be honest, Denman was not only one of the best 3 mile chasers of recent times, but he also had a frame made for lumping weight around. How many horses have actually won it with a rating above 170?? Put it another way, wouldnt he have to come on alot from his defeat of Djackadam and Road to Riches to be able to concede this kind of weight.
So at a current price of 5/1, thats a no from me.
SHL
Only looking at the last 10 runnings there has only been Denman who has ran with a rating of over (170) he obviously won it in 2009 off (174) and was a very gallant 3rd the year after off (182).
Weight carrying might not be the toughest in this race as top weights haven’t done bad in the last ten runnings…Denman (x2) (2007 & 2009) and Trabolgan (2005) won it….Houblon Des Obeaux (2014) and Tidal Bay (2012) both finished 2nd and Denman (2010) and Snoopy Loopy (2008) finished 3rd….
What you need to ask yourself is how many of those are anywhere near as good as Coneygree is at this present time….and the answer IMO is none….Denman you could argue but I think Coneygree is better at this stage and still potentially improving…
You also have to ask…how good is Coneygree and is his (172) rating being a little conservative? In any of his 5 wins could you say another 6lbs would have stopped him? It’s impossible to know how good he potentially is until something goes past and beats him.
On everything we know about the horse I think it’s a damn good bet that he will run to a rating at least in the mid to high 170’s with natural progression and improvement…He comes to the race an unbeaten and progressive horse who you know will set out on a relentless gallop and jump the fences for fun…will the horses receiving the weight run right up to their marks to take advantage of the weight they receive?…
Denman conceded lumps of weight to decent horses in 2009 having been hammered in the previous years Gold Cup by Kauto Star…..the likes of What A Friend and Barbers Shop couldn’t take advntage of the weight they got and I’m absolutely convinced Coneygree will follow what Denman did and break their hearts like he does…
Coneygree is currently rated 171p with Saphir du Rheu on 164p – the weights are released tomorrow so Coneygree will be on (11-12) and strictly on ratings that would leave SDR on around 11-05?
If Coneygree repeats his Gold Cup performance then in all likelyhood he wins – is SDR a 170 horse, probably but I am not 100% convinced at this stage that his jumping will stand up to the kind of examination Coneygree will put it under.
Having said all that, Timeform currently have Don Cossack on 180 and imho at any distance from 3m up I would take Coneygree over Don Cossack any day of the week and twice on a Sunday. For me he got an massively inflated rating based on two runs, beating a sub par Cue Card at Aintree and Djakadam & Road To Riches (who clearly left their races behind in the Gold Cup) at Punchestown – even allowing for the fact that he was hampered at the last in the Ryanair, it was debateable whether he would have actually beaten Uxizandre in any case and so I reserve judgment on just how good he is until after the King George.
https://www.timeform.com/racing/articles/Timeforms_Top_Chasers
Coneygree is officially rated (172) and Saphir Du Rheu is (163) so will be 11st 12lbs and 11st 3lbs respectively…
Don Cossack’s record over here speaks for itself…1 win from 4 starts and the win was against a field of horses full of question marks and missed targets….I agree about his victory over Djakadam and Road To Riches too…a month previous those two had run the race of their lives at Cheltenham…how anyone can seriously think they were the same horses at Punchestown must be living in a fantasy world!
He is improving though and I was lucky enough to see him in the flesh at Down Royal and he looked a picture! Again though, like the rest, will his jumping hold up when asked to go a serious gallop? One or two mistakes in a championship race run at a decent gallop and it could be curtains…
Coneygree could be anything, but from an ante-post viewpoint, the price holds little appeal, for me, at least. 6 of his 9 wins have been on ground softer than GS (on which he won his other 3). While he’s highly likely to get some cut at Newbury, it’s just as likely, perhaps more so, to be GS rather than softer, and there is, of course, a chance the ground will be good (he’s never run on ground without soft in the description).
His connections, especially Sara, seem fixated on The Hennessy, bafflingly so, for me. He could run in the Betfair for 10k more to the winner, in ground highly likely to be softer than Newbury will get, without giving away lumps of weight, in a much smaller field, at around evens, or perhaps a shade of odds on based on the current probable line up. It’s a Grade 1 (Hennessy Grade 3), and if he wins, he could be supplemented for the KG where he’s again almost assured of his ground, and could then wait for the Gold Cup, hoping for a downpour, which, should it come, would give them a huge chance of landing this tiny yard a £1m bonus.
As the Yanks say, go figure.
I’m not much of a stats user, but you can’t argue with facts, and I’m far gloomier about Bobs Worth after reading Ben Aitken’s analysis of Henderson Chasers in the past 13 calendar months: 10 winners from 103 runners. More alarming – 44 of those runners were in Class 1 Chases, and yielded just 1 winner.
:(
I would be amazed if Saphir du Rheu can beat Coneygree even with the weight allowance. For me SDR could have 20 odd pounds in hand and still he wouldn’t beat Coneygree purely because Coneygrees style of racing puts him under too much pressure and so far out of his comfort zone, hence the unseated rider and fall in their 2 races last season. Yes SDR has looked improved over fences on his last 2 runs but he’s had nothing to get him out of his rhythm. As soon as that happens his jumping leaves much to be desired
I read a description of Coneygree today from the same Ben Aitken article saying ‘he’s a big like Denman but a bit more refined’ and that sums him up perfectly for me and I can see a Denman-esque performance coming granted the ground doesn’t go against him.
Often the Gold Cup can leave a mark on a horse but based on Sandown and last Sunday, Coneygree is only going to get better and improve for that run.
Steeplechasing, Haydock is a gaff track – tight with soft fences. Why on earth would Coneygree run there?
The one thing that struck me about Coneygree when I saw him in the flesh at Sandown was that he wasn’t as big as I thought he would be – I purposely went down to the pre-parade ring to see him before and after he was saddled and whilst he is a powerful unit he didn’t look as big as Southfield Theatre did and certainly not Denmanesque.
However, the most impressive thing (even over his galloping ability) is his outstanding jumping technique not only as a second season novice but because he is a horse having only his fifth chase – most horses (novice or not) can come up off a decent stride without much trouble but to see him automatically shorten at a fence when the stride isn’t there (and without too much jockey input) is very rare. He already looks like an old hand that has been jumping fences for 4 or 5 years and he is very economical with the amount of energy he uses to do it, a distinct advantage for a staying chaser especially in energy sapping soft ground.
It would be interesting to see if he could still operate at that level on good ground (a surface he has never encountered before) where he would be travelling a stride or two faster and probably having other runners harrying him for the lead – a set of circumstances that could take him out of his comfort zone.
Whatever happens in the Hennessy, I just don’t see there being much chance of seeing him lining up for the King George as well – yes he ran at the same two meetings last year but that was in the novice division which is light years away from running in a Hennessy & King George.
“”If Coneygree repeats his Gold Cup performance then in all likelyhood he wins – is SDR a 170 horse, probably but I am not 100% convinced at this stage that his jumping will stand up to the kind of examination Coneygree will put it under”””
Ah, See this is whether we strongly differ. There isnt an irishman who believes Road to Riches or Djackadam could shoulder near that weight in Hennessy and Coneygree wasnt that far ahead of them. He may be improving but he is 8 so possibly not as much as lot of novices. Churlish to knock the horse and his achievements but as Joe has mentioned above, this seems a strange target really.
The other horses who have ran well with big weights tended to be in the mid 150s,. Thanks to Coneygree, those
will be sitting around with a much easier weight on their back and are much more likely to run given that some of the less able opposition are now out of the handicap.SHL
Steeplechasing, Haydock is a gaff track – tight with soft fences. Why on earth would Coneygree run there?
Don’t think I can list any more reasons than I already have, unless you want to add timing: Haydock’s a week before, so they get the chance to not only judge the ground, but the opposition too. It’s not as though it’s a week later and they’d be taking a big gamble on both.
As for Haydock being a gaff track, well, tell that to the likes of Silver Buck and Night Nurse, who I saw on my first visit there and all the other champions who’ve run there since. They only changed the fences, they didn’t turn it into Fontwell, and in winter ground it offers more than stern enough a test for any stayer. There wouldn’t be much more than 50 yards difference in the lengths of the home straights between Haydock and Newbury.
Coneygree’s won twice at Uttoxeter, much tighter in general nature than Haydock.
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